Pep Takes Positives as U's Head for Southend

Oxford United look to take the positives from both the win at Plymouth and Tuesday’s defeat against Blackburn as they travel to Southend on Saturday.

“It’s a good opportunity for us against a Southend side who we know did very well last season and fought for the play-offs all season, and right now have the best home form in the league” Manager Pep Clotet told iFollow. “So that’s the challenge for us, to be the first to win there, although we know it will be very difficult. We have to build on the performance at Plymouth and there were positives against a strong Blackburn side on Tuesday as well, so we have to use bits of both games against Southend.

“At the same time, although I was not happy with the result at all I was happy to see unity between the players and the fans. The players are trying to get their own identity as a team and I think the fans see this, so despite the result you can see the fans being supportive and appreciating the way the players try to play. Things will only get better from that. Once you get together through bad moments you get stronger together.

“The fans know we work very hard and that we are going through a tough period without complaining or making any excuses. We lost players in the summer who would have made a difference, fans know that, but we just get our heads down and try and put in good performances. We did that at Plymouth and we tried to do it on Tuesday as well. We have our values and our principles and we apply them and in the end I am sure everyone will see this pay off.”

See the whole interview including a fantastic tribute from Pep to Christian Ribeiro, plus the thoughts of Jack Payne on returning to Roots Hall and Xemi Fernandez on next week’s training camp near Barcelona, all in iFollow right now.